Copyright (c) 2000 Ohio Northern University Law Review Ohio Northern University Law Review 2000 26 Ohio N.U.L. Rev. 529 LENGTH: 22970 words THE TWENTY-THIRD ANNUAL LAW REVIEW SYMPOSIUM THE ULTIMATE PENALTY: A MULTIFARIOUS LOOK AT CAPITAL PUNISHMENT: SYMPOSIUM ARTICLE: The Future of the Federal Death Penalty NAME: Rory K. Little* BIO: * Professor of Law, Hastings College of the Law, U.C.,
[email protected]. Special thanks to Dean Victor Streib of Ohio Northern University Law School, for encouraging me to deliver this paper at his beautiful school in March 2000, to Richard Dieter for saving me from some errors, and to the patient staff of the ONU Law Review. Thanks also to Stephen Brundage, Hastings Class of 2000, and Dan Pollack, Class of 2002, for fast and accurate research assistance, and to Suzanne Menne and Daniel Joy for high- speed clerical assistance. This Article was finalized in August 2000, and thus may not comprehend significant subsequent developments. SUMMARY: ... One of the many threads comprising the recent past and likely future of the federal death penalty is the story of Juan Raul Garza. ... Thus, an unusual convergence of diverse political camps may now combine to question the federal death penalty: an uneasy alliance between opponents of federal capital punishment and those opposed to the phenomena known as "federalization" of crime. ... Political and legislative avenues of attack are likely the most hopeful course for opponents of the federal death penalty because the Supreme Court implicitly approved the legality of the statutory structure in 1999, when it affirmed, albeit 5- 4, the death sentence in the first federal capital case to be argued before the Court in over fifty years, Jones v.